The East Beauregard Elementary robotics team 25705B competed in their first competition in October at the R5Halloween Tournament in Lake Charles. The nine member team is comprised of Zakary Watkins, driver/builder, Liam Miller, programmer, Asher Cole, programmer, Trevor Fletcher, driver/builder, Paisley Ferrell, driver/builder, Raelynn Harper, engineering notebook, Jared Messer, driver/builder, Lila Messer, builder/videographer, and Wyatt Fox, utility.
At the competition, the team competed in six team alliance matches. These run one minute, and teams work together to score as many points as possible using four goals on the field. The teams must drive the robot, pick up balls, and shoot on goals. They can also score points passing the ball.
In the first round of the competition, the robot broke down. The team had to re-group, find and fix the problem, and earn enough points in the final rounds to advance.
“The robotics program helps to build coding skills, communication, teamwork, and problem solving,” said sponsor Rebecca Snead. “Our goals for the competition were to become a better team that can work together to solve problems, and we wanted to return from the competition with ideas of how we can become better.”
In addition to the team competition, the group participated in driver skills and autonomous skills challenges. The drivers skills challenge has two drivers running a course for one minute to score as many points as possible with the highest of the three runs counting as the score. In the autonomous skills challenge, a pre-programmed robot runs a course for one minute, navigating the playing field, picking up balls, driving to the goal, and shooting the ball. The highest score of the three runs counts. The Engineering notebook documents the design process as the team builds, programs, and practices runs with the robot.
The EBE robotics team made the finals of the competition and won the VEX IQ Challenge Innovative Award for their Engineering notebook. The team is also ranked 38th in the nations for coding. They will compete at the state event in Baton Rouge in February where they will try to earn an invitation to the worlds competition. Until then, they will work on their design, coding, and improving their skills for competition.
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